The Grand Seiko Spring Drive SBGA011 is better known to Grand Seiko fans simply as the "Snowflake," and it's probably the single most iconic model for Grand Seiko Spring Drive, having been first introduced in 2010 (hard to believe). In the seven years since its release it's become a huge fan favorite, and a much-lauded critics' darling as well, with praise lavished on its unique dial, and the general fit and finish so characteristic of Grand Seiko as well. Interestingly, Grand Seiko has never offered this dial with any other movement than Spring Drive and in fact, the characteristics of the Spring Drive movement are essential to the overall impact of the watch as a whole – with a conventional automatic movement, or with a conventional quartz movement, this would be a very different experience on the wrist, in perhaps subtle but unmistakable ways.

There are really two parts to the Snowflake story: one is the aesthetics in general, and the other is the Spring Drive movement. The Snowflake is a very calmness-inducing watch – the subtle play of light on the dial, with its resemblance to a field of newly fallen, lightly drifted snow, and the silent, smooth glide of the blued steel seconds hand, combine to give a feeling of time flowing uninterruptedly, but also unhurriedly, and one seems to see time almost from a timeless perspective, as one is supposed to when deeply absorbed in meditation. By contrast, a mechanical watch presents time as a series of oscillations – the frequency of the balance is visible in the stuttering forward motion of the seconds hand, which jumps forward once per swing of the balance as the escape wheel unlocks.

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A quartz watch works somewhat differently. The quartz crystal vibrates 32,768 times per second; it does so because quartz is a piezoelectric material – that is, it deforms mechanically when you pass an electric current through it. Piezoelectric materials also generate electricity when they're mechanically deformed, which means you can easily count the number of times per second the crystal is vibrating (you just count the number of electrical pulses it generates). The frequency is chosen for a simple reason: 32,768 is the fifteenth power of two, and by dividing the pulses from the crystal by two repeatedly, you can easily get a one second interval. The integrated circuit that does the division, then signals a stepper motor to advance the seconds hand one increment. This one second jump was characteristic of the long-obsolete duplex escapement, a variation of which was much used for watches for the Chinese market in the 19th century; in Watchmaking, George Daniels remarked, "This system was once held in high esteem by the Chinese who despised crawling seconds hands on their watches."

This is merely to point out that the action of the seconds hand naturally tends to become an important part of our perception of both the flow of time, and of the character of a wristwatch. This is so much the case, that a watch that beats dead seconds – a so-called deadbeat seconds complication – is often despised by mechanical watch enthusiasts, who find it too reminiscent of a quartz watch (even the Rolex name was not enough to make the complication commercially successful, as witness the obscurity of the Rolex Tru-Beat). Very high frequency quartz watches can give the illusion of smooth continuous movement, as can high-beat mechanical watches, but Spring Drive is the only wristwatch technology with true continuous forward motion.

The Evolution Of Spring Drive

As with any basic advance in timekeeping technology, the Spring Drive had a long and sometimes painful gestation. The original idea was pioneered by Yoshikazu Akahane, an engineer at Seiko Epson in Shiojiri, Nagano Prefecture (now called the Shinshu Watch Studio to reflect its concentration on Grand Seiko Spring Drive and Grand Seiko quartz watches; it's also the home of the Micro Artist Studio, where high end Spring Drive watches like the Eichi II and Credor chiming complications are made). Akahane began experimenting with the idea in the late 1970s (the date usually given is 1977 or so) and the first patents were issued for the concept in 1982. However, it was not until 20 years had passed that Seiko presented the movement publicly, at Baselworld in 1997. In 1998, the first commercially available Spring Drive watches were released.

Twenty years of Spring Drive research: bottom right, an early prototype with the glide wheel visible above three coils; top right, a second prototype from 1993; left, a third wristwatch-cased prototype.

There are several reasons that it took so long. A Spring Drive movement has a quartz oscillator in it, but there the resemblance ends between it and a conventional quartz watch. A quartz watch has a battery; Spring Drive does not, and moreover, a quartz watch may or may not have hands – as HODINKEE Editor-at-Large Joe Thompson notes, many of the earliest commercially successful quartz watches were digital, not analogue – while in Spring Drive the hands are essential (there's no way to build a digital display Spring Drive watch). Spring Drive watches, moreover, are powered by mainsprings; there is no equivalent in quartz watchmaking. The closest relatives are probably Seiko's Kinetic and the Swiss Autoquartz calibers, but these are standard quartz watches with the addition of a rotor-driven micro-generator that tops up a rechargeable battery. In fact, a Spring Drive watch is indistinguishable technically from any other mechanical watch, right up to where the escape wheel would be in a standard watch movement.

Grand Seiko Spring Drive Caliber 9R65, with 72 hour power reserve.

Where the escape wheel, lever, and balance would be in a conventional watch, we find instead what Seiko calls the Tri-Synchro Regulator. "Tri" refers to the three types of energy present in the regulating system: magnetic, from the glide wheel; mechanical; from the mainspring; and electrical, from the quartz crystal. The last gear in the going train turns the so-called glide wheel, which has at its hub a permanent magnet. This turns between two electromagnets located at one end of a pair of wire-wrapped coils and the whole thing functions as an electrical generator (the glide wheel acting as the rotor) in accordance with Faraday's Law, which says that a conductor moving in a magnetic field will generate a current.

The current generated goes to an integrated circuit and quartz crystal, which vibrates as the current passes through it, and the IC counts the oscillations. However, rather than dividing by two until a one second interval is counted off, and then sending a signal to a stepper motor, the IC passes energy back to the electromagnets surrounding the glide wheel. Here electrical energy becomes magnetic force, and this exerts a braking energy on the glide wheel; the amount of electrical energy fed back is precisely controlled so that the glide wheel turns eight times a second exactly. Thus, the glide wheel ensures that the mainspring unwinds in a controlled fashion, in the same way that the escape wheel, lever, and balance (and balance spring) of a conventional watch control the rate at which the mainspring unwinds.

Coil, Seiko Kinetic movement.

Coils from a Spring Drive movement; the permanent magnet at the center of the glide wheel rotates between the two semicircles, bottom center.

In essence, therefore, Spring Drive movements are mechanical, but with an electromagnetic escapement regulated by a quartz oscillator. One of the reasons development of Spring Drive took so long, is because the amount of energy generated is extremely tiny. To be usable in a commercial watch, it was necessary to develop a special low-energy-consumption integrated circuit, and as well, the coils had to be wound with very thin copper wire, in order to ensure the maximum number of turns around the coil itself. For this purpose, a special type of wire was developed with an hexagonal cross section, allowing the coils to be wound with no gaps – not even microscopic ones – between the turns of the wire, which means greater total length in a given volume. You can actually see the difference between the coils used for Seiko Kinetic watches (which have batteries charged by a mechanical rotor) and Spring Drive coils with the naked eye; during our recent trip to Shiojiri we were able to photograph the two coils side by side.

Driving wheel and glide wheel, Grand Seiko Spring Drive.

The amount of electrical energy generated is extremely minute; one way of visualizing it is to imagine everyone on Earth wearing a Spring Drive watch. Were this to be the case, the resulting electrical energy would be just barely enough to light one 100 watt light bulb. In order to have an acceptable power reserve, the entire system has to work extremely efficiently, which is why it was necessary to develop a new coil system, as well as the high efficiency integrated circuit. The mechanical train has to be manufactured and assembled to a very high degree of precision as well, in order to reduce frictional losses to an absolute minimum (this is an easy thing to miss about Spring Drive but for them to work, they have to be high precision mechanical watches as well as advanced technology platforms).

The question is often asked, "isn't Spring Drive a quartz watch?" It's not, at least not in the sense we usually think of quartz watches. The electromechanical drive system in Spring Drive is regulated by a quartz crystal, yes; however, there are so many fundamental differences between Spring Drive and quartz watches as a class, that it really is a different technology. Ultimately, Spring Drive isn't really a mechanical watch in the ordinary sense of the word, but it's not a quartz watch either – it's Spring Drive.

The Snowflake Dial

The Snowflake dial has a texture that's generally compared to that of freshly fallen snow but it's not really a literal representation of a snow field, of course – it's not really a literal representation of anything, which is part of the reason that it's so compelling. It has something of a lot of different things – the texture of water color paper, or a rice paper screen, for instance – and the fact that it doesn't lend itself to identification with anything in particular, means that it's going to look and feel different for everyone. This is also very Japanese – so much of the aesthetics in traditional Japanese culture are about what you leave out, as much as what you put in.

Landscape by Sesshu Toyo, 1495.

A dial is not a washed-ink brush painting, of course, but in this instance some of the same aesthetic criteria are at play. The composition has to be balanced but not static, and negative space has to be offset by just enough contrasting elements to keep things dynamic without becoming cluttered. The single most important element on the dial compositionally in terms of providing a dynamic element is the power reserve, which is located and executed in such a way as to break up both the surface texture of the dial – which otherwise might seem a bit too monotonous – and balance the presence of the date window. Another big part of the appeal of the dial, of course, are the contrasting textures – the diamond-bright reflective surfaces of the hands against the snowflake dial surface, with the blued steel seconds hand gliding silently across the whole thing. One of the most appealing aspects of the watch is that its design elements don't give the impression of particularly striving to create an effect; it seems natural and effortless.

The creation of the dial is a multi-stage process, involving stamping the initial pattern onto a dial blank, and then adding successive layers of coating to create the subtle translucency of the final dial. The indexes for Grand Seiko watches are cut with a diamond-edged rotary cutting tool, overseen by a technician who manually operates the cutting machine, and who uses a small hand mirror to make sure the index surfaces reflect the light in the desired fashion. Once the lettering is printed, the markers applied, and the date window surround inserted, the dial's ready to become part of the watch. The creation of a Snowflake dial is very labor intensive, but no less so than many of the other dial making processes at the Shinshu Watch Studio in Shiojiri; the amount of hand-work that goes into dials, hands, and markers is extensive, and the result is the very high quality, in Grand Seikos across the board, for which Grand Seiko is famous.

On The Wrist

As we said at the outset, the Spring Drive Snowflake SBGA211 is a very steadying watch to wear. The entire thing seems to have been calculated to create an effect of serenity without boredom; of minimalism without sterility. On the most basic level, wearing it is an exercise in experiencing a watch that absolutely fulfills the most basic social contract of a watch, and a watchmaker, with an owner: it is instantly readable, delivers all information with absolute clarity, is extremely accurate, and is useful and usable under just about any conditions you could reasonably expect it to meet. Not only are there no compromises made with functionality, functionality is actively pursued as a goal meaningful in itself and again, this achievement of an aesthetic effect through the pursuit of functionality, without a desire to create an effect per se, is pervasive in traditional Japanese culture – perhaps nowhere more iconically than in the Japanese sword. The most basic question for the katana is not "how does it look," but rather "does it work?" but how it looks, of course, is a direct result of how it's made to work as exceptionally well as it does.

This is the year that Grand Seiko became a separate Seiko brand from Seiko overall, which means that the Snowflake now no longer has the Seiko logo at 12:00. The Grand Seiko logo has been shifted from its former position at 6:00 up to the 12:00 position, and as a result the whole dial is much less cluttered – the degree to which "Seiko Grand Seiko" watches seemed a bit redundant always varied quite a bit from model to model but for the Snowflake, I think the change is a definite improvement and really gives the dial a sense of repose that it didn't quite have before.

Wearing the Snowflake is also an exercise in achieving irreproachable functionality. The case and bracelet are Seiko's "High Intensity" titanium, which has the lightness, comfort, and hypoallergenicity of titanium but with much better scratch resistance. Despite the brightly polished case bevels and bezel, you don't wear this watch with any concern about inflicting noticeable scratches on it, and despite its somewhat large-for-Grand-Seiko diameter (the case is 41mm x 12.5mm) it remains extremely comfortable to wear – adjusted for a slightly snug fit on my seven inch wrist, it became almost unnoticeable, unless I happened to need to check the time or date.

The Competition

In terms of competition, this is a particularly interesting year at this price point, with a number of manufacturers going out of their way to offer watches as attractive as possible at $6,000 or less – so much so that we didn't find it difficult at all to round up several of them in a quick survey last July. The lineup includes Tudor's first chronograph with the new Breitling-supplied movement; the always-reliable Rolex Oyster Perpetual, and of course, the Snowflake itself. However, in a very real sense, the Spring Drive Snowflake doesn't have competition – at least, not in the sense of competing with other watches that use a similar technical approach. Christopher Walken is supposed to have said, "I've been lucky in my career in that, in Hollywood, if you want a Christopher Walken type, you pretty much have to hire Christopher Walken." In the same vein, if you want a Spring Drive, you pretty much have to get a Spring Drive; there's no almost-a-Spring-Drive.

Final Thoughts

I think that at the current price (SBGA211 is $5,800), this is one of the most satisfying watches out there right now. Yes, it's as objectively excellent in its pursuit of practical benefits to the owner as you could ask. Accuracy is rated officially by Seiko to one second per day but anecdotally Grand Seiko Spring Drive owners generally note accuracy that's much better – often, an order of magnitude better. It's easy to wear day in and day out; and reading the time couldn't be a more instantaneous affair – even in very low light situations, where you'd think some sort of luminous material to be indispensable, thanks to the beveled and highly reflective surfaces on the hands and indexes, telling the time is a snap. At the same time, however, you can also approach and appreciate the watch in terms of what it represents technically. Spring Drive takes a bit of time to understand, but it's well worth the effort in terms of seeing just how different it is from both conventional quartz and standard mechanical watches, and if you find technical achievement and innovation in independent timekeeping interesting (that is, not radio time signal or GPS controlled) Spring Drive is one of the most interesting developments since quartz itself was introduced by Seiko in 1969.

Where the Snowflake really wins hearts and minds, though, and where it's been winning hearts and minds for nearly a decade, is in its design and aesthetics. The degree of excellence in fit and finish you rightly expect from Grand Seiko is a big part of that, but as with any really successful design object, the whole is a lot more than the sum of its parts and as a design object with a uniquely Japanese heart, the Spring Drive Snowflake is deservedly a perennial Grand Seiko fan favorite. Grand Seiko is known in the watch enthusiast world as an icon of quality, and within the Grand Seiko family, the Snowflake particularly stands out, as a highly successful integration of the many qualities that make Grand Seiko so appealing – an icon's icon, if you will.